Gone with the Wind is based on a durational Twitter project by Vanessa Place in which she tweeted the whole text of Margaret Mitchell’s 1937 novel from her account @VanessaPlace between 2011 and 2015. The text was cut up into tweet-length sections (140 characters) that were posted around five times a day. According to Place, the intention was to bring attention to the novel’s inherent racism and to question its hardly disputed place in America’s cultural heritage (see Vanessa Place, “Artist’s Statement”). This was done by relaying the appropriated text through her Twitter account as well as violating copyright, by which the novel is still protected.

Place’s work caused controversy in 2015 for reproducing racist language and imagery, leading to Place shutting down her Twitter account before finishing the reposting of the entire novel, and to publish an artist statement explaining her intentions.

It was in this context that two books of the same title were published. The one in our collection “gleans the racist language and imagery of the original” (Vanessa Place, “Artist’s Statement”) and sets it in square blocks on each page. This layout decision was described in the author’s statement as setting the racist language in “slave blocks,” referencing the stone blocks that were used to display and auction slaves. This framing by the author was also highly criticized for appropriating and reproducing symbols of white supremacist oppression. On Lulu, the book’s blurb consists solely of a link to the artist statement.

The other book reproduces the entire text of the original in order to once again shed light on Place’s copyright infringement. This book, however, is no longer available.

Place has repeatedly worked with print-on-demand, most prominently with her Factory Series, to which this publication is falsely attributed in its colophon.